When I first started reading blogs written by other sex addicts, one of the things that really bugged me was when they just quit writing. I hated that! I mean what the heck happened? Did they decide they didn’t want recovery after all? Were they acting out again and miserable? Did they die? Did they get better? So I was determined that if I started a blog, the one thing I’d never do was just drop off the blogosphere without a word. And then of course, I do that very thing I promised myself I wouldn’t do.

For all of you who have wondered – I’ve been doing really well. I’m still sexually sober. I still haven’t made up my mind about whether or not I should drink, so I’ve remained abstinent from alcohol. I still don’t smoke. My husband and I are getting along great. We are happy.

Figuring out what to do with the time I used to spend navel gazing and porn surfing has been a big part of my recovery. I imagine that’s true for any one struggling with any kind of addiction. And over time, I’ve become more and more involved with life and less and less interested in thinking about sex addiction.

I used to be really afraid that I’d feel the way I do now. I thought that to stay in recovery meant that I’d have to stay vigilant because drifting away from recovery is . . . dangerous. I might quit going to meetings. I might lose my focus. I might slip. After all, it’s an incurable disease and I’m always going to be an addict. But the truth is, I don’t feel afraid. And I don’t think it’s because I’m getting cavalier or taking my recovery for granted, I think it’s because living in recovery from addictive sexual behavior is NOT living in fear. It’s living with choices.

Yesterday I was faced with just such a choice but you’ll need a bit of background to understand what happened.

Part 1. There’s a blog I visit where the owner is anxiously awaiting the TruBlood series. It’s a pain because she puts in music and little video clips but I ignore them and scroll down to the posts I’m interested in. It wasn’t triggering and I didn’t really give it much thought beyond my mild annoyance.

Part 2. I’ve been trying to exercise for longer periods of time. If I’m going 30 minutes, an audio book or some tunes work fine but I’m trying to stay on the treadmill for a whole hour. Hulu has been helping me. I pick a tv show and watch it. During the commercial bits, I rest. So far it’s been working like a charm! I’m distracted enough to exercise for the entire length of the average TV show. I’ve been alternating between Lie to Me (which I love) and Castle (which is dumb – but one of the actors was great in Firefly, which I loved).

Part 3. Sometimes the buffering isn’t great and the show stops and starts, which annoys me because I remember how tired I am and how much I want to get off the darn treadmill.

This brings us to yesterday when I found myself trying to decide which past episode of TruBlood to watch after Castle went on the fritz. Now TruBlood isn’t a bad series. I don’t mean that at all. I saw a few episodes last year and I’ve read a few of the books and there’s nothing wrong with them. They’re entertaining. But I had a therapist who was into dark, demonic sex and a childhood that left me with a deep streak of self-hatred and a coping mechanism of compulsive sexual behavior.

As I was reading through the episode descriptions and trying to decide which show I wanted to see, I got one of those lightening bolts of clarity. I could rationalize watching that show till the cows come home, but no matter how I spin it, this is not a series that I should be watching.

And that’s where recovery is: in that moment of clarity I got to choose to watch something else. And while I’m sad that I can’t watch whatever I want, realistically, there are a lot of other things to watch just like there are a lot of other things besides alcohol to drink. And that makes me feel like smiling because I’ve come a long way!

If anyone reading this is struggling with addiction – I sincerely hope you don’t give up on yourself. It really can get better!

So I went online today and happened to see a link to this PETA commercial. I loathe PETA. Let me say that again. I loathe PETA. But I saw a little blurb about them on O’Reilly the other night, plus the fact that I’m sitting here typing instead of exercising like I’m supposed to do might explain how my little pea-brain bounced around and decided to click on the link. Probably too, I like feeling morally superior and PETA ads always help me feel morally superior. I might be a recovering sex addict, but I’m not condescending and rude.

Or maybe it was just random neurons firing.

So here’s the funny part — I haven’t even gotten to see the video clip with the ad. In order to watch it, I have to sit through a Walmart ad. Guess what they’re selling? hehe. Steak.

This makes me smile. I hope it makes you smile too.

Somebody at foxnews.com must be having a laugh. The interview with the PETA spokesperson was good. That “ends justify the means” method is immoral. I loathe PETA.

Temple Grandin. Now there’s a woman who should be the spokesperson for PETA. She has made a huge difference in the ethical treatment of animals in the US and Canada.

My husband has started a new business and I’ve been working with him for the past few weeks. My house hasn’t been cleaned in almost a month, there’s no food, and the damn dog keeps peeing in my closet. My exercise routine has evaporated and I can’t remember the last time I actually cooked dinner. Does boiling spaghetti and dumping a can of pesto on top count as cooking? Probably. But my husband’s the one who has been doing that. And can I take a moment to say that I hate PC’s? Honest to God, it’s like the whole world got together and decided to drive around on square tires.

For most of my adult life, I haven’t worked outside the home so going from full time mom to full time work has been a real adjustment. Life has become unbalanced. Now that I have a moment to stop and reflect, it’s kind of weird that I’m not craving sex. Or alcohol. Or cigarettes. In treatment we addicts were warned that getting out of balance was dangerous to our sobriety. Personally I think it’s because my life isn’t completely out of whack, it’s just a bit tilted. Or maybe it’s that I’m too busy and overwhelmed right now to notice my sobriety is getting wobbly. Maybe once things slow down a bit it’ll hit me like a ton of bricks. I have had the few odd thoughts, but that’s not unusual. Sexual thoughts come and go, it’s whether you entertain the thoughts that make a difference.

I got a comment recently from Rae about the PCI. I’ve been thinking about that every single day since she posted it. It’s particularly pertinent because the PCI is a tool to help you maintain healthy balance in your life. I have a nifty chart (you can download a copy from the link on the left of the home page of this blog). I have a spreadsheet that will draw me a graph of my PCI over weeks, months, and years. It’s got nice pictures and a beautiful layout with a calm green background. Very artistic. I have a virtual sticky note on my computer for my PCI.

I’m sure you can guess where I’m going with this. I can’t remember the last time I actually USED my PCI. It was probably a week or two after I posted about what a wonderful too the PCI is. And it really is a great tool. But you gotta use it. That whole darn post was trying to make that very point – great tool but you gotta use it.

I have spent a lot of time refining my recovery tools. Seriously. Download my PCI if you don’t believe me! I can wax eloquent and post like some kind of recovery guru but the honest truth is that yellow sticky notes are just about the only thing I’ve found that works consistently. And that’s because I can stick them on the steering wheel, the mirror, the toilet, and the fridge. Those are all places I see at least once a day.

I’m saying that – and it sounds good doesn’t it? But we’ll see if I can actually follow through and put some of those stickies up before I fall completely off the balance beam.

So to answer your question Rae, yes I think your therapist is right. The PCI is a good tool and you should use it. So should I. And so should your therapist!

Sometimes don’t you wish someone could make you do what you should do?

In the face to face world, I’m the only atheist in recovery I know besides my husband, and he doesn’t go to meetings. In the online world I’m on the same list-serve as two other atheists who are sex addicts. Both men. There’s 21 members over at the Atheist Nexus form for atheists in recovery (here). That’s a big group, mostly alcoholics and drug addicts. Then there’s this guy Chris, whom I don’t know but I read this page of his over and over while I was coming to terms with my conversion to atheism. 

Recently someone commented on one of my posts. Comments are so validating! The commenter, bukabuddah, really touched me. The whole comment is here but the part that really got to me is this:

“For the love of FRICK! (not the word I actually used but close enough to allow me to express without being offensive)

I just want to be clean and sober and not engaging in addictive behaviors. I believe that I need a group of other like minded people to accomplish this daily goal. Hence, my problem. Must I deny my true beliefs and rational reality to have a support group!?! I am hoping that this post will bring me some much needed support and love from people who are simply trying to live free like I am.”

I’m really lucky. I belong to a group that doesn’t give me grief for being an atheist. Ever. I’m also lucky because I knew and loved the people in my group before I became an atheist. In other words, I was a full member of the group with a strong sense of belonging BEFORE I became an atheist. I knew I was accepted in a way I don’t think would have been possible had I come in the door an atheist.

You can read a well balanced article about this incident here.

This is why newcomers have to call to find out where meetings are. This is why some meetings screen.

If you’re a reporter and you want to do a story on sex addiction, try educating yourself a little first. Then call some local contact numbers and ask if you can visit a meeting, ask if you can interview a member. Lots of us are willing to give interviews if you’ll protect our anonymity.

Not all sex addicts are sex offenders. You can wreck your life with masturbation alone, especially if you tie something around your neck. There’s Internet porn, 1-900 numbers,and  chat rooms. They’re all legal. Being a prostitute or soliciting a prostitute are both illegal. So is dropping your cell phone and snapping a quick upskirt. Exposing your private parts is illegal, although women who wear skirts without panties usually aren’t arrested. Having sex in a public bathroom is illegal, especially if it’s two men, but dry humping a dancer in a strip club is legal, as long as you don’t touch the dancer with your hands.

People are afraid to go to meetings for two main reasons. Number one, someone will see them. Number two, someone will think they’re a pedophile. 

Not all alcoholics are murderers, right?

I’m not posting any links today. The articles I’m talking about are easy to find, but be wary of triggers. 

I finally cut all ties to Salon.com today. It’s a bummer. Back when they had Mothers Who Think I really enjoyed dropping by. I read essays by Anne Lamott and David Brin there. For years I’ve been getting the newsletter and every once in awhile something will pique my interest and I’ll go read. But lately, it’s been a real disappointment. 

I’m pretty open minded but I feel sad reading articles about how sexy and fun voyeurism was with an couple the (young, female) author met online. There’s a salon blogger who shares that the people she met at the bdsm club are more polite than the folks who hang out at the bar. I’m sure that’s true, but wow. Sad. Of course people can and do make sexual mistakes, and actually that blogger is a good example of how someone can do something weird or kinky and absolutely not be an addict. She decided it wasn’t for her, and so she stopped. But still, something that was a part of a really creepy, seamy underground when I was young is now acceptable. And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Maybe it’s a generational difference, like racism. My grandmother was scandalized when she saw an interracial couple. She felt it was unconscionable to bring children into the world who would be rejected on both sides. She embarrassed me. The language she used made me cringe. I couldn’t make it compute because I loved my grandma and knew she wasn’t a hateful person. People on that side of the family died in the Civil War, fighting slavery. But the words she’d grown up using (colored) had become slur. I understand that better now. Twenty years ago a woman in the playground flipped her lid and admonished me for not teaching my child to say African-American instead of Black while both our children looked on in confusion. Her child cried just as hard as mine did when she was pulled away. I was terribly hurt and still feel a little stab of fear when I have to choose my words. How do you tell someone that you’re not racist? We signal it by our language, but the rules get weird and not everyone agrees on them. My grandmother didn’t consider herself a racist, but I did, mostly because of her language but also because of her outdated, wrong ideas.

I don’t consider myself a prude, but I wonder if that young blogger would. I don’t want to squelch anyone’s pleasure or sexuality. I’m not a judgmental person. But maybe that young author would disagree. Maybe I have outdated, wrong ideas. I know I have outdated ears. The language teenagers use today is offensive and rude, but they obviously don’t agree. I couldn’t imagine calling a female friend a bitch.  

These kinds of discussions are what I used to love about Salon.com but it’s been a long time since I’ve read the likes of David Brin and Anne Lamott there. Even so, it’s taken me a long time to give up hope. Today I realized that I need to just let go. Today I clicked on what I thought would be an article about liberals and conservatives having a dialog about abortion. It was a comic strip featuring the great white anti-abortion devil, Bill O’Reilly. For the record, I like Bill O’Reilly. The weird vibe he’s got going with a lot of the females he has on the show bothers me, but I’m admittedly hypersensitive to flirtations behavior. I resent being lumped (as an atheist) together with left wing radicals. It was the letters though that convinced me it’s time to let go of Salon.com. They were depressing, a bunch of juvenile delinquents throwing curses at each other. “Obviously you have a teeny tiny penis.” “Homosexuals have bigger penises.” Mob stupidity. 

I guaran-damn-tee I’m not the only person in America who believes that a woman has the right to choose AND is pro-life. There is a point where the right of the child to live supersedes the right of the mother to choose whether or not to be pregnant. Figuring out where that point should be – that’s where I’d like to see the debate go. Poking scissors into a baby’s head and sucking out the brains so they can be pulled out is different than a D&C. And those are different from the morning after pill. I think we can all agree that prevention is best, but how should we go about that? We can tell that one of Saturn’s moons has water but we can’t figure out an effective way to control conception? How can such smart people be so dumb? I’m sure we can figure this out without calling names and comparing penis size.

Maybe I’m the one who’s changed. Maybe it’s always been this vitriolic and now that I’m older that kind of dialog has lost its charm. I don’t know. But it seems to have become a meaner place than it used to be. I don’t want to read vitriolic diatribes any more. It’s depressing, like the whole world is Lord of the Flies writ large. 

Maybe it’s because all the mothers who think have left.

Sue Silverman is one of those authors that was a big help to me when I desperately needed help. I’ve mentioned her book, Love Sick here and here. I talked about the made for TV movie based on that book here. The new book is Fearless Confessions. I should have my copy in a few days.

It’s funny. I was already thinking about Ms. Silverman because my sobriety anniversary is coming up. Contemplating going to residential treatment for sex addiction is a big deal. At the very least, it’s expensive and your day to day family life is seriously disrupted. You have to figure out what to tell people about where you’re going. When it comes down to it, it’s only worth going to rehab if it’s going to work. I didn’t know anyone who had been to rehab for sex addiction, even though I’d been going to meetings for quite awhile. I knew lots and lots of people who’d gone for drug and alcohol addiction and clearly it made a difference if you went someplace “good” and if you “really wanted” recovery. It wasn’t too hard to find someplace good. When I was looking there was a choice of oh, let’s see; about five treatment centers that dealt specifically with sex addiction. And they were all unbelievably expensive so I wanted to be sure this wasn’t a mistake.*

So I asked the only person I knew that was a female sex addict and had been to treatment. Not that Ms. Silverman is so important and famous. Oprah hasn’t picked one of her books yet, but still, I didn’t really expect a reply to the email I sent her.

—– Original Message —–

Subject: did rehab work?

Hi Ms. Silverman,
 
I’ve read your book, _Love Sick. I was wondering, what
 your thoughts about rehab are in hindsight. Someone
suggested to me that if I can’t get sober in SA I
 should look into rehab but it freaks me out on several
 different levels.
 
 Thanks, [My real name].

But she did reply. Maybe I was reading too much into her words, but it felt like she was giving me a helping hand, which was just what I needed. I started researching treatment facilities, just in case. 

I’m looking forward to reading this book because I really want to write a memoir. I’ve wanted to write a book for most of my life, but the problem is I’m more of a reader than a writer. But that doesn’t mean I can’t become a writer, right? I’ve surely read enough about how to do it; I’ve got as many how to write books on the bookshelf. I use semicolons and when I fragment a sentence it’s deliberate. To add emphasis, style, and pace. It’s a little embarrassing, really. Like having a bunch of cookbooks (that you read!) and then eating takeout every evening. (The “it’s” is implied, making that sentence complete.) (And when the entire sentence is parenthetical, the ending punctuation goes inside the closing parentheses.) I know the rules without having to look them up but the actual creation eludes me.

Because I don’t just want to write a memoir, I want to write a good one, like Sue Silverman’s. Or like Augusten Burroughs’s,  Anne Lamott’s, Jeannette Walls’s, or Jeannette Fulda’s. You know what I mean – something that people would actually want to read, not some “yet another wordpress blog” kind of book. I want to write something that gets published. And sold. Shit, Burroughs wrote three memoirs, and they’re all good.

I think the key is humor. Good writing doesn’t hurt either. I think I could do as well as some of the turds that are burbled into Dragon NaturallySpeaking, spell checked and printed. 

If any editors are reading this, I promise I’d never complain about having to rewrite or delete.

*Since sex addiction isn’t in the DSM-IV, it’s technically not a disease and insurance usually doesn’t cover the treatment. Actually it would be more correct to say there’s some argument about the term “sex addiction” as a possible diagnosis. As it stands now, there’s no way for health care providers to specifically code for sex addiction. However, as we learn more medical texts are updated so there’s a very good chance the DSM-V will include sex addiction among the compulsive-impulsive disorders. There’s a good article here about how sex addiction can be classified under the current DSM-IV.

**Based on this book, it sounds like the decisions about the DSM are made by committee and not always based on research.

A few days ago, Rae pointed out to me that I’m giving away my power in the post where I complained about not fitting in because I’m an atheist. When I read that I thought she just didn’t understand what it was like. I phrased it a little differently to myself in my own head. Bad words were involved.

But that comment has been nagging at me. She said the only person who isn’t at peace with me is me. Of all the nerve!

I really was feeling left out and all alone. And angry too. But now I’m wondering,  is it possible that I’ve been suffering from terminal uniqueness? That loneliness that happens when you sit by yourself with your head down contemplating how much different you are from every person who passes by?

Thinking about how vast the universe is renders the whole atheist in recovery thing moot because in that moment, it just doesn’t matter. The awe I feel fills up all the cracks and there’s no room for feeling shut out. There’s no room for anything but awe and gratitude.

Thinking about myself is absolutely a necessary part of recovery. I need to understand what triggers me, how to stay sober, how to take care of myself. All of that requires a degree of introspection and it helps me stay sober. But like everything in life, introspection can be overdone. When it devolves into navel gazing I get the opposite of numinous, which is isolation.

It’s imperative to have others in your recovery. You cannot do it alone. 

Let me repeat that. You cannot do it alone. 

Because no matter how smart you are or how many books you read, you cannot see some of the mistakes you’re going to make. 

It’s like the TV show, What Not to Wear. It’s always a shock to the people when Stacy and Clinton go through their wardrobe. And so far I haven’t once seen someone react to that with pleasure. They know it’s for their own good. They’ve seen the secret footage where they look horrible. And they still argue to keep the clothes that don’t look nice on them. They’re often snide and downright mean to Stacy and Clinton. Those two remind me of good sponsors. They don’t back down and they don’t sugarcoat anything. But they genuinely care. That’s obvious.

Almost everyone cries before the hairdo and makeup day. Letting go is painful. But afterward, people clearly look and feel beautiful and they thank everyone for caring enough to help.

In recovery we say that our friends care enough to tell us our slip is showing.

Most of the leaps I’ve made while trudging this happy road of destiny have come on the heels of cursing some jerk who had the temerity to point out that my slip was showing.

I wanted to thank everyone for their comments on my last post where I was venting about feeling like the only atheist in recovery. It helped to hear from you. It’s easier to give up a delusion when (online) friends and kind people offer a reality check. Thank you.

Today, I’d like to post on the compelling nature of the pain killing effect of acting out. In a nutshell, it’s hard to resist, particularly when you don’t even know you’re in pain!

Usually I don’t take it personally when someone points out how many times the word “God” is written in the Big Book of AA. What really bothered me is that I feel I have to be careful not to offend with my atheism, which is nonsense. If they didn’t kick me out when I pounded the table, called the sober guys happy bastards, and said that the program sucked and didn’t work, they’re probably not going to kick me out. It’s my own feeling of not belonging that’s the problem.

I’m working on it.

The day went pretty much as I expected. I washed the tears off my face and spent the rest of the day on two levels. Part of me got ticked at every little thing and another part of me sat back and watched. I don’t know how it is for other recovering addicts, but in my case, that meant that I was able to recognize and contain my anger so I didn’t spoil the day for my family. We all enjoyed the game (GO PENS) in large part because I didn’t act like a hostile porcupine jabbing people right and left.

The next day was sad. Sad, sad, sad. Again I had the double perspective. Part of me was sad, and part of me observed that I felt sad. And again I was able to contain myself and not leak emotions all over the family.

Containment is different than bottling up your emotions. Both days I told my family how I felt. The first day, the kids knew I was angry. Often when this happens, they try hard to “be good” to make me feel better. But life is better when we’re all responsible for our own emotions. We’re empathetic, we’re kind, we try to help, but we’re not responsible for “fixing.” So I told the kids that I was cranky and overwhelmed with the house being such a pig sty. I asked one to help with the laundry and the other to clean the bathroom. They pitched in, I was glad for the help, and telling the truth about how I felt meant that I wasn’t a human pressure cooker. Nobody had to skulk around wondering when I was going to blow or trying to surreptitiously bleed off the pressure.

Which brings me to today. I’m still irritable, but you know what? Something clicked. The day BEFORE the tirade my daughter showed me a video that she loves but doesn’t really understand. Even writing about it now makes my stomach clench. The video is on youtube if you want to see it. Click here and a new window will open. So anyway, the worst part of everything that’s happened to me in the past 4 years is that my children now know that I was molested. They know that like many others, I had some trouble and when I went for help, the therapist that was recommended turned out to be very bad. We explained that it was like being sick and getting poison instead of medicine from the doctor. There’s no erasing that. There’s no pulling that burden back, no re-containment.

It’s a good song, a good video. It portrays a child who is molested and it was hard for me to watch. My emotions are much more raw now than they were years ago when I’d anesthetized myself to that particular pain. And my daughter was watching ME like a hawk. I wanted to bottle my emotions up and approach the interpretation of the video as a literary exercise but I couldn’t. For one thing, she’s too perceptive. I suspect that the whole reason she asked me to watch it was to gauge my reaction. So I just said that I agreed that the video was about the girl being abused, that it made me feel very sad, and that I didn’t really want to talk about it right now because I didn’t want to feel sad. “Besides,” I said, “the house is a wreck and I want to at least get the kitchen cleaned up.” She was happy with that, proud that she’d figured it out (the meaning of the video), and relaxed because I didn’t fall apart. She bounced off to clean her room and everything went back to normal. I thought then that I went back to normal too. But now, looking back I wonder. 

That’s a long story but I wanted to illustrate the weird path that feelings and emotions sometimes take and why acting out is so compelling. I may be wrong, but I think that underground hurt (both my specific molestation and the general hurt I feel for others’) and the underground fear (that I’ve hurt my children) is what led to feeling upset about the “god stuff,” which led to the next thing and then the next. You get the idea. At any point on that road, I could have taken a detour and gotten some instant relief from a pain I wasn’t even fully aware I was feeling, which is that I’m so sad that she knows. I’m frightened that she’s been scarred. And I wish none of this had happened.

When I say those fears out loud, they sound a lot smaller than they feel when they’re moving around in the underground. And although I’m no expert, I’m pretty sure this is a human thing, not an addict thing.

Click on the pic to follow the album cover to the twilight sad’s myspace page. It’ll open in a new window and the song that goes with this album cover, cold days from the birdhouse will start playing. An apropos image and song for this post.

I am sick, sick, sick of all the god shit that I hear in recovery. It’s like being in an office where everyone is laughing at a dirty joke – a sharp reminder that you’re different.

Because I’m an atheist in recovery I feel a responsibility to bear witness to the fact that belief in God is not necessary and that despite all appearances to the contrary, atheists are welcome. I want them to know that recovery is freedom, not brainwashing and that you don’t have to self lobotomize to get better.

I spend a lot of time with this. I’ve written a booklet about atheists being welcome, I explain ad nauseam that it’s a spiritual program, that the steps are a way of changing. I’ve submitted articles for publication and offered my two cents to other atheists whenever the subject of addiction comes up. I even have a little form letter that explains how I work step 3, steps 5-7 and step 11 for the mildly curious. I write in much greater depth about how I reconcile the spirituality of recovery with the reality of my atheism for those addicts who are truly frightened that they’ll have to drink the kool-aide to recover. There is a group that keeps something I wrote on hand in case an atheist comes to them seeking recovery. How cool is that?

But as I type this, I think there’s a very real chance that I’m completely full of shit. I’m at the water cooler but instead of dirty jokes, it’s god talk. Maybe it’s time for me to stop pretending that I fit in. After all, as I just read in an article, the fellowship of recovery is not for everyone.

And about that, I feel very sad. And I hate crying over something so incredibly stupid. I know that crying is a necessary part of life and that it’s important to acknowledge feelings, but . . . but it feels weak to cry and pathetic to want to be in a club that doesn’t really want me.

Now if things follow true to form, I’ll feel sad for awhile. By the time I upload the illustration for this post, I’ll feel better. I’ll log off, go wash my face, and things will be fine. Later, I’ll be cranky. I’ll notice that someone left a half empty can of soda on the floor by the couch. Maybe the dog will bark. My husband will definitely do something to pluck my nerves. But eventually I’ll remember that I’d rather feel strong and angry rather than weak and sad.

I want to really belong and not wince every time somebody goes on a tirade about how the original edition of the Big Book didn’t shy away from using the word God or whatever anti-atheist shit they’re spouting at the moment. I won’t act out. And I don’t need to figure this out today; after all, it’s been an ongoing theme for me.

Time to upload the pic and wash my face. That’s the next right thing: putting one foot in front of the other on the path of Happy Destiny.